Just what is a “greenfriar,” anyway? It’s Friar Tuck laughing in the woods between raids on the king’s men, St. Francis wandering the countryside talking to birds, Katniss Everdeen living lightly off the land, monks brewing beer in an alpine village, and Johnny Appleseed building community gardens for America’s rough new settlements. And now it’s Greenfriar.com, a place for those of us who give a hoot.
Our patron saints are the desert bard Edward Abbey and the Sierra archdruid David Brower, Annie Dillard at Tinker Creek and Henry David Thoreau at Walden Pond, Paul Watson battling whalers at sea and Jane Goodall fighting poachers in the rain forest. We hope to find more patron saints like these in the months and years ahead, because circumstances demand it.
But a good life requires much more than sainthood and struggle, and Saving the World is dull work without love and fun and space to breathe and adventure for the hell of it. Greenfriar knows that you know our General Predicament, so we promise not get too bogged down in Bummerville. We will fight for what’s right, and mourn for lost lands and lost species and lost chances, but never without celebrating everything that is here and alive today, never without awe for the common and the spectacular, backyard birds to blue whales.
We are glad you’re here—glad that you’re a Greenfriar, too! And while we deeply appreciate your companionship here, we also hope you’ll put this and every other website or app or game or Internet outrage aside on a daily basis and get outside, whether it’s a walk around the neighborhood, pulling weeds in the garden, or beers on the roof with your friends on a summer night.
Greenfriar launched on March 4, 2013, and is in beta release finished its brief publication schedule in July of the same year.
* Photo on this page by Laura Crane.
Greenfriar 